A News Blog

Keeping you in the know in the world of politics

TUSCALOOSA | Last month I wrote a post here (‘”Rashomon’ in Cullman,” Jan. 30) in which I compared the completely different spins the Republicans and Democrats put on a special legislative election won by the Democrat, James Fields, in that north Alabama county. Seems I left something very important out. Simply because I had not been following what was going on in the special election, where the previous lawmaker, Democrat Neal Morrison, left office to take a position in the… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | The writers and producers of two major political stories in the last week are guilty of what we call in the newspaper business call “burying the lead.” That is to say, putting the real, most pertinent information down in the body of the story after “leading” with something superficial, beside the real point, or worse. In the cases this week of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s involvement with lobbyists, which ran in the New York Times, and… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | While the Feb. 5 Democratic and Republican primaries in Alabama were certainly exhilarating in that for once they meant something and the on-going struggle for the presidential nominations in both parties is interesting to watch from a distance, the fun of up-close-and-personal presidential politics here is probably over. In the Feb. voting, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama crushed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side in Alabama while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee edged Arizona Sen. John… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | Are politicians like Barack Obama and Artur Davis engaging in what some are calling “post-racial” politics? For today’s Tuscaloosa News I wrote what we call in the business a “thumbsucker” examining that new meme making the rounds. But be forewarned, it is long for a blog post: By Tommy Stevenson Associate Editor TUSCALOOSA | Is U.S. senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama the Tiger Woods of politics? More to the point, are Obama and others of his generation,… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | Think what you will about the veracity of lack thereof of The New York Times report today about Arizona Sen. John McCain’s possible unethical involvement (professional and otherwise) with a female lobbyist 30 years his junior and dating back as long as a decade ago. But the thing that really ticked me off last night as the story broke was the way pundits and reporters talked about it on television. Seems like they all knew about the potential… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | This ginned up controversy over Illinois U.S. Sen. Barack Obama “plagiarizing” his good friend and political soulmate Gov. Devall Patrick is the stupidest one yet of the 2008 presidential campaign. Last week, after Sen. Hillary Clinton attacked Obama as essentially being nothing but a smooth talker, while she was the only candidate who could get things done, Obama pointed out that words are, indeed, important: “Don’t tell me words don’t matter. ‘I have a dream’ — just words?… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | Much has been made of the fact that even though Barack Obama got 56 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 42 percent in the Feb. 5 Alabama Democratic presidential primary, Obama’s edge in elected delegates currently stands at 27-25. If you do the math and base the delegate count on the percentage of the vote won, Obama would have 29 delegates elected in Alabama going to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, while Clinton would… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | In my At Large column in today’s Tuscaloosa News, I looked at the Democratic presidential primary battle between Hillary Clinton, comparing the Clinton campaign to the “Terminator” in its relentlessness, and Barack Obama and the movement that seems to be gathering behind him to Bobby Kennedy in 1968. At the end of the column I cautioned that should Obama not get the nomination, his followers should be careful not to give up hope for change and keep their… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | Why doesn’t he just drop out, the pundits wonder about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his doomed campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Even the former Baptist preacher and bass guitar player admits tithe inevitability of Arizona Sen. John McCain amassing the number of delegate needed to get the nomination and it will take a “miracle” for him to get the nod. But soldier on he does and he does so in such an ingratiating, engaging way… Read More »

TUSCALOOSA | It tells you a lot about how our soldiers in harms way in Iraq and Afghanistan feel about the flawed mission they are on that Ron Paul has collected more campaigns contributions from our men and women in these hellholes than any other candidate. Republican presidential candidate Paul, of course, has been the most vociferous in his denunciation of the war of choice in Iraq and it speaks volumes that while the amount of money he is getting… Read More »